Inter Press Service - July 3, 2002
Chayanit Poonyarat

Last month, 86 villagers and the president of this subdistrict in Udon Thani province were among those who vigorously protested the presence of five orphan girls with HIV at a local school last month.

The subject of the village's ire, the seven-year-old girls had to be pulled out of Ban Khao Sarn school just three days after they starting coming in. Today, three of them are studying in a nearby province, and two are being taught by volunteer teachers who come to their orphanage.

"This is the first time we tried to send our HIV-infected girls to school," Achara Yodphet, head of the Northeastern Welfare Centre for Girls orphanage where the five girls were staying, told IPS.

In remarks that show the HIV/AIDS toll in this South-east Asian country, she says this is because most of the children in the centre die before they reach school age.

But even the three days they had at school made a big difference for the five girls, Achara says, because they were with other children. "We sent them to school so they could learn how to live with the community. We were sure this would certainly have a positive effect on the children's physical and mental condition," she explained.

Achara says that the five girls eagerly looked forward to school each day, always talked about their friends and enjoyed doing homework.

But their rejection underscores how far efforts for the acceptance of and understanding of people with HIV/AIDS have to go, even in a country like Thailand that is known to be tolerant and has an aggressive programme against the pandemic.

"It is impossible for HIV-infected to live separately from their societies," Jaran Ditapichai, a member of the Human Rights Commission, said in an interview. "But above all, people should realise that HIV-infected people hold equal rights as we do. People in the community have to lend a hand to one another."

This is not how the leaders of Non Sung thought. "Healthy students risk catching the disease from the infected girls and this causes great concern to all parents," sub-district president Chalong Phuwisai in a statement.

He claimed that the number of HIV-positive children in the community was likely to "increase" if the infected girls were allowed to get close to other children.

The villagers ordered their children not to attend any classes if the HIV-positive children were present, believing that the virus could be spread by the five youngsters through physical contact, and through mosquito bites.

"I pleaded to the locals for understanding but they still refused to let their children attend school. The school then had no choice but to reverse its decision to accept them in Grade 1," Wichai Kruaysawat, headmaster of Ban Khao Sarn School, said, although he know the act violates the children's constitutional rights.

"It is cited clearly in the constitution that all people are equal and unjust discrimination against a person on the grounds of the difference in backgrounds, beliefs and physical or health condition are not permitted," Jaran confirmed.

But while the five girls, like any other child in Thailand, legally have the right to an education, he says the Non Sung incident shows that "it is not too easy for government and societies to put this into action".

"HIV-infected people can certainly live with others," said Sompong Chareonsuk, country programme adviser of UNAIDS Thailand. "Unfortunately, it is a fact that some people know very little about the disease so you can't expect them not to fear it."

The incident also shows that efforts to give the right information about HIV/AIDS and get acceptance of people living with it lag far behind the severity of the pandemic here.

As the number of AIDS-related deaths rise two decades after the first cases were found in the country, the number of young Thais affected by the pandemic - both as HIV/AIDS sufferers and as those orphaned by it - is rising.

Some 670,000 Thais out of the country's 63 million people are living with HIV/AIDS today, while 55,000 died last year, according to the 'Report on the Global HIV/AIDS Epidemic' released by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) on Tuesday.

Some 21,000 Thai children are affected by HIV/AIDS and 290,000 orphaned by the epidemic.

Orphanage officials have not told the girls the real reason why they no longer go to Ban Khao Sarn school. Achara says she lied to them because they were too young to cope with HIV/AIDS and the disappointment of being robbed of a chance to go to school.

"Mom (the orphanage head) told us that we had to stop going to school because they miscalculated our age and they said we were still too young to attend a class," Waree (not her real name) one of the five rejected students, was quoted as saying.

She was brought to the orphanage at the age of two by her grandmother, after her father and mother died of AIDS. With good care from doctors of Srinakarin Khon Kaen Hospital, the girl is in good health and shows no symptoms of AIDS.

Sompong adds that conscientious and continued campaigns are needed for people to understand the epidemic, but it has not been easy for Thailand to come up with the needed resources for its HIV/AIDS programmes.

At one point, he said, the budget for HIV/AIDS programmes from the Thai government and the private sector reached 70 million baht (1.68 million U.S. dollars) yearly. "The economic crisis in 1997 was among the main factor which put off these campaigns," said Sompong, adding that efforts are underway to get more resources.

HIV-positive people coming together and more community involvement could also help in the fight against AIDS. "For those with HIV, mental support is needed as much as medical cure and I believe that Thailand, with its social background, will do this well," he said.

Last week, the residents of Non Sung sub-district, its administrative organisations, schools, health department and Achara, met to discuss the case of the five girls.

"Little by little, we plan to have those with HIV involved in community activities and vice versa," said Achara. "We agree that HIV-infected can't be set apart from their community."

That might be a first step, but community leaders say the farthest they can go is to accept in their schools only HIV-positive children from their area -- and not those from other provinces that are staying with local orphanages. (END/IPS/AP/HE/HD/CP/JS/02)

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